Sean Ross is Edison Research’s Vice President of Music and Programming. A longtime industry observer, Ross works with Edison’s radio and music industry clients, offering strategic analysis and music knowledge that goes beyond the numbers.

The best part about radio’s infinite dial is that there are more than 100,000 choices. The worst is that you pretty much still have to know what you want. I try to provide audio concierge services for Ross On Radio readers, but I could always use one myself. Which European top 40 will have the great song I can know about six months before the U.S., and which will just be playing “I’m Not the Only One”? Which small-market station will be transporting, and which one will be syndicated?

My radio tourism has always benefitted from those aggregators who show you a lot of choices. Uberstations.com allows me to toggle around most of any market’s radio dial, often with “now playing” information. TuneIn.com once had a feature that showed “now playing” information from dozens of stations in the same genre that you were listening to.

That feature is gone, but there’s still predictive search on TuneIn’s radio app. That’s how I came across CKFU Fort St John, BC. I was preparing for a trip to Toronto and typed in the calls of top 40 CKFM (Virgin Radio). After typing in three characters, I got “Moose FM,” one of a number of similarly branded (but not identically programmed) Canadian stations.

Moose FM was billed as “Energetic Country.” I would always want to listen to a station that played energetic country, but the name itself seemed a little awkward. After some listening, it became clear that Fort McMurray was “the Energetic City.” And thus Moose FM became the perfect local station – one that an outsider needs at least 20 minutes to understand.

Last night, I started using the predictive search to find more stations I didn’t know. I was looking for KVIL Dallas. Here’s where I ended up next:

KVIK Decorah, Iowa – It’s Classic Hits in Northeast Iowa. When I came across it, it was playing “All Fired Up,” the long lost Pat Benatar single that marked the end of her hit streak. It was followed by the country-rock opus “The Road Goes On Forever” by Joe Ely. “Chevy Van” by Sammy Johns was in there, too. So was “Fred Bear,” Ted Nugent’s eight-minute hunting tribute, which led to PM driver Pete Wennes talking about his first bow and arrow. Like much of the small-town radio I come across, “The Viking” was hosted, which makes it considerably more live-and-local than many large-market outlets.